The thing you have to admire about the Obama administration is its ability to fight furiously on several fronts at once. The economy. Individual liberty. The rule of law. National security. In his pursuit of “fundamentally transforming the United States of America” (as he promised [1] his followers in October 2008), Barack Obama has managed to undermine them all. It’s been an impressive, if also a depressing, performance.

Just a few reminders: On the hustings, Obama lambasted George Bush [2] for adding $4 trillion to the national debt over the course of eight years. That was, I readily acknowledge, profligate behavior. But Obama has vastly outstripped George Bush, adding more than $6 trillion to the national debt in just under 3 years. $4 trillion, $6 trillion: if only there were some means of making it as gargantuan a task to write or read those words as it is to comprehend what such numbers portend. There is no way, so I hesitate to remind you that Obama is set to ask for another $1.2 trillion in spending money. When that happens, the federal debt will clock in at more than $16 trillion. Thanks for the hope, Barack!

Ring out the new, ring in the old.
No, hang on, that should be the other way around, shouldn’t it? Not as far as 2011 was concerned. The year began with a tea-powered Republican caucus taking control of the House of Representatives and pledging to rein in spendaholic government. It ended with President Obama making a pro forma request for a mere $1.2 trillion increase in the debt ceiling. This will raise government debt to $16.4 trillion — a new world record! If only until he demands the next debt-ceiling increase in three months’ time.
At the end of 2011, America, like much of the rest of the Western world, has dug deeper into a cocoon of denial. Tens of millions of Americans remain unaware that this nation is broke — broker than any nation has ever been. A few days before Christmas, we sailed across the psychological Rubicon and joined the club of nations whose government debt now exceeds their total GDP. It barely raised a murmur — and those who took the trouble to address the issue noted complacently that our 100 percent debt-to-GDP ratio is a mere two-thirds of Greece’s. That’s true, but at a certain point per capita comparisons are less relevant than the sheer hard dollar sums: Greece owes a few rinky-dink billions; America owes more money than anyone has ever owed anybody ever.
#ad#Public debt has increased by 67 percent over the last three years, and too many Americans refuse even to see it as a problem. For most of us, “$16.4 trillion” has no real meaning, any more than “$17.9 trillion” or “$28.3 trillion” or “$147.8 bazillion.” It doesn’t even have much meaning for the guys spending the dough: Look into the eyes of Barack Obama or Harry Reid or Barney Frank, and you realize that, even as they’re borrowing all this money, they have no serious intention of paying any of it back. That’s to say, there is no politically plausible scenario under which the 16.4 trillion is reduced to 13.7 trillion, and then 7.9 trillion, and eventually 173 dollars and 48 cents. At the deepest levels within our governing structures, we are committed to living beyond our means on a scale no civilization has ever done.

During Obama’s Super Bowl interview [2] with Bill O’Reilly, Egypt was in the midst of a revolution that eventually led to the ouster of longtime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Obama was asked about whether the Muslim Brotherhood was a threat. He responded [3]:

I think they’re one faction in Egypt. They don’t have majority support in Egypt. But they’re well organized. There are strains of their ideology that are anti-U.S. There’s no doubt about it.

He went on to claim [4] that there are many secularists and liberals in Egypt that wanted representative government. The rest of the administration followed suit, with Daniel Shapiro of the National Security Council assuring Jewish groups on a conference call [5] that the Muslim Brotherhood would “be a minor player in Egyptian politics.” New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof also pointed to [6] questionable polls claiming that the Muslim Brotherhood only received 15 percent support.

As we’ve seen in recent weeks, the president was completely wrong in his assessment (as were the administration flacks and media lapdogs who parroted the president’s claims). In the first two rounds of elections, the Muslim Brotherhood has come out on top, and with their Salafist Al-Nour allies, they aim to control the Egyptian parliament with a significant legislative majority — possibly enough to rewrite the country’s constitution. In the first round, they secured [7] 37 percent of the seats; in the second round, they won [8] 47 percent of the seats up for grabs.

Now, the Obama administration’s think-tank allies are spinning the Muslim Brotherhood’s electoral success [9] by assuring the Beltway’s “smart set” that the group is savvy and politically flexible, meaning there’s nothing for us to fear.

How did Obama miscalculate so poorly on the Muslim Brotherhood’s support in Egypt? Well, that brings us to …

The surrender is complete now. The Hindu reports that the Obama administration has turned to Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood’s leading jurist, to mediate secret negotiations between the United States and the Taliban.

I wrote about Qaradawi at length in The Grand Jihad and, here at NRO, have regularly catalogued his activities (see, e.g., here, here, here, here, and here; see also Andrew Bostom’s “Qaradawi’s Odious Vision”). For those who may be unfamiliar with him, he is the most influential Sunni Islamist in the world, thanks to such ventures as his al-Jazeera TV program (Sharia and Life) and website (IslamOnline.net). In 2003, he issued a fatwa calling for the killing of American troops in Iraq. As he put it,

Those killed fighting the American forces are martyrs given their good intentions since they consider these invading troops an enemy within their territories but without their will. . . . Although they are seen by some as being wrong, those defending against attempts to control Islamic countries have the intention of jihad and bear a spirit of the defense of their homeland.

Qaradawi urges that Islam must dominate the world, under a global caliphate governed by sharia. He maintains that Islam “will conquer Europe [and] will conquer America.” He sometimes qualifies that the conquering will be done “not through the sword but through da’wa,” but the qualification is a feint.

Da’wa sounds harmless — it refers to missionary work to spread Islam. Islam, however, is not like other religions. The idea is not to spread a set of spiritual principles but incrementally to impose a full-scale social system with its own authoritarian legal code, covering all aspects of life and instituting a caste system in which women and non-Muslims are subjugated. Nor is da’wa like other missionary work; it is the use of all available means of pressure — political campaigns, lawfare, infiltration of the media, control of the education system, etc. — to advance (a) the acceptance of Islamic principles and (b) the evisceration of principles (e.g., free speech, economic liberty) that undergird competitors, in particular, Western civilization. Moreover, the claim that da’wa is non-violent is frivolous. Much of the mission of da’wa is to rationalize terrorism as divinely mandated self-defense.

Thus does Sheikh Qaradawi champion Hamas, mass-murder attacks, and suicide bombings. “They are not suicide operations,” he brays. “These are heroic martyrdom operations.” Indeed, he elaborates, “The martyr operations is [sic] the greatest of all sorts of jihad in the cause of Allah.”

Thus does Qaradawi urge the destruction of Israel, rebuking clerics who dare counsel against killing civilians. “I am astonished,” he inveighs, “that some sheikhs deliver fatwas that betray the mujahideen, instead of supporting them and urging them to sacrifice and martyrdom.” As the Investigative Project on Terrorism recounts, when the imam of Mecca’s Grand Mosque issued guidance against the killing of civilians, Qaradawi upbraided him: “It is unfortunate to hear that the grand imam has said it was not permissible to kill civilians in any country or state, even in Israel.”

Not surprisingly, then, the sheikh is also wont to invoke what the West refuses to acknowledge: the Jew-hatred that is endemic in Islam because it is rooted in scripture — not in modern grievances that could be satisfied if only the West changed its policies and Israel had the good grace to disappear. As Qaradawi puts it, echoing the charter of Hamas (the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian branch):

This is what is told in the Hadith of Ibn-Omar and the Hadith of Abu-Hurairah: “You shall continue to fight the Jews and they will fight you, until the Muslims will kill them. And the Jew will hide behind the stone and the tree, and the stone and the tree will say: ‘Oh servant of Allah, Oh Muslim, this is a Jew behind me. Come and kill him!’ The resurrection will not come before this happens.” This is a text from the good omens in which we believe.

Qaradawi uses his al-Jazeera platform to preach this message to the Muslim masses. As the Middle East Media Research Institute and Robert Spencer document, in one memorable Friday “sermon” broadcast in 2009, he prayed that Allah would kill all Jews: “Oh Allah, take this oppressive, Jewish, Zionist band of people. Oh Allah, do not spare a single one of them. Oh Allah, count their numbers and kill them, down to the very last one.” He added that throughout history, Allah had imposed upon Jews “people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Adolph Hitler.”

After thousands of young Americans have laid down their lives to protect the United States from jihadist terror, President Obama apparently seeks to end the war by asking Qaradawi, a jihad-stoking enemy of the United States, to help him strike a deal that will install our Taliban enemies as part of the sharia state we have been building in Afghanistan. If the Hindu report is accurate, the price tag will include the release of Taliban prisoners from Gitmo — an element of the deal Reuters has also reported. The administration will also agree to the lifting of U.N. sanctions against the Taliban, and recognition of the Taliban as a legitimate political party (yes, just like the Muslim Brotherhood!). In return, the Taliban will pretend to forswear violence, to sever ties with al-Qaeda, and to cooperate with the rival Karzai regime.

It would mark one of the most shameful chapters in American history.

— Andrew C. McCarthy, a senior fellow at the National Review Institute, is the author, most recently, of The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America.

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/ IOWA ROLL Santorum is finally getting a look from Republican voters, if only a partial one, and it took long considering that he’s far more consistently conservative in his positions. Is he electable, that’s another issue. Romney still has a fairly open path to the nomination only because the Anti-Romney vote has not solidified […]

http://www.carolineglick.com/ In recent months, a curious argument has surfaced in favor of US President Barack Obama. His supporters argue that Obama’s foreign policy has been a massive success. If he had as much freedom of action in domestic affairs as he has in foreign affairs, they say, his achievements in all areas would be without […]

http://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Columnists/Article.aspx?id=251509 When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. – Sherlock Holmes in This Sign of the Four There has been much talk in Palestine about emigration, especially among the young people…in search of a better life abroad. Many are continuing to rush to the gates of the embassies […]

Prof. Moshe Sharon teaches Islamic History at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
This important column appeared in OUTPOST the publication of Americans for a Safe Israel. Professor Sharon was the featured speaker at our national conference…..rsk

Everybody says that his donkey is a horse.There is no tax on words.

(Two Arab proverbs)

On December 25, 1977, at the very beginning of the negotiations between Israel and Egypt in Ismailia, I had the opportunity to have a short discussion with Muhammad Anwar Sadat the president of Egypt. “Tell your Prime Minister,” he said, “that this is a bazaar; the merchandize is expensive.” I told my Prime Minister but he failed to abide by the rules of the bazaar. The failure was not unique to him alone. It is the failure of all the Israeli governments and the media.

On March 4, 1994, I published an article in The Jerusalem Post called “Novices in Negotiations”. The occasion was the conclusion of the “Cairo Agreement”. A short time later, Yasser Arafat, proved yet again that his signature was not worth the ink of his pen let alone the paper to which it was attached, and his word was worth even less. Then, as in every subsequent agreement Israel was taken aback when her concessions had become the basis for fresh Arab demands.

In Middle Eastern bazaar diplomacy, agreements are kept not because they are signed but because they are imposed. Besides, in the bazaar of the Arab-Israeli conflict, the two sides are not discussing the same merchandize. The Israelis wish to acquire peace based on the Arab-Muslim acceptance of Israel as a Jewish state. The objective of the Arabs is to annihilate the Jewish state, replace it with an Arab state, and get rid of the Jews.

Eric Cantor is merely speaking the truth something no amount of Arab protest can change
Dr. Ahmed Tibi, MD, an Arab member of the Israeli Knesset, and former advisor to PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat, recently wrote an op-ed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch attacking US House Majority Leader Eric Cantor for having declared that “If the Palestinians want to live in peace in a state of their own, they must demonstrate that they are worthy of a state.” In and of itself hardly a remarkable position considering the history of organized Palestinian Arab terrorism that has gone on unabated since the founding of the PLO in 1964 and before. Yet Dr. Tibi then infers that Mr. Cantor therefore “holds all Palestinians responsible for the violence of a few.”
This interesting assumption made by Dr. Tibi is that Palestinian Arab violence and support of said violence is the handiwork of a “few”, a small minority. To determine whether this is true, two basic issues have to be clarified. One, whether or not said violence is the result of only “a few” who implicitly carry out their violent work against the wishes of the Palestinian Arab leadership and without popular support from the Palestinian Arab population. And two, what is considered to be moderate and non-violent means in the view of Dr. Tibi.

Pandering to P.C. demands will sink us, will weaken our foundations and our unique culture; a culture of tolerance yet of logic, of equality but also of independence.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.11138/pub_detail.asp

Pandering will sink us, will weaken our foundations and our unique culture; a culture of tolerance yet of logic, of equality but also of independence.

It is our behavior (and not our thoughts) that should be the real issue. How we treat each other, whether we abuse or respect each other, whether we acknowledge all people with equality and fairness. That is the American way.

It is not the American way to become more like Saudi Arabia or Iran. There they have public dress codes, Shariah law and other niceties like stonings, beheadings and honor killings. Ours is a modern society based on humanistic behavior, on accommodating the individual – not serving the Sheik, the Imam, the police or local thugs.

Here we protect and nurture the individual, not subvert our freedoms in the service of the “greater good” as defined by Allah’s unblemished representatives here on earth, or by a dictator’s goons, as the case may be.

When the Irish, the Jews, the Indians and the Hindus applied for jobs, they chose their workplace and accommodated to the rules accordingly. When was the last time a Hasidic Jew with full length black coat and fur hat demonstrated outside Miami City Hall for the right to wear their preferred dress in any job of their choosing? When did Hindus demand new cafeterias to accommodate their dietary needs? When did Mormons require separate prayer facilities or Buddhists their temples? What of vegetarians, anorexics, Rastafarians?